


Exile

by glorious_spoon



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Leia's grief that he feels first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

> I finally got to see 'The Force Awakens', and this is really just me wailing about my feelings for 350 words.

He senses Leia first: sees her knees fold, her hand come up to clutch at her chest as though her heart has just stopped beating, like he’s in the room with her instead of light-years away. It’s a full breath later that he feels the reverberating shock of Han’s death, his own knees going weak beneath him, mechanical hand outflung to steady himself on thin air. The afterimage of Ben’s face and Han’s fingers, gnarled and knotted with age, slipping away into darkness. Then nothing.

Leia, he knows, felt it right away. It’s not that he loved Han any less, but she always did have a better sense of the living Force. And they created a child together. That binds two people together like nothing else can.

Ben…

Luke gropes with shaking fingers until he finds the edge of his small eating table, steadies himself. Realizes distantly that he’s weeping. The air here is sweet and cool, but for a moment he can taste the memory of smoke on a desert breeze; for a moment, he is twenty again, standing outside his uncle’s farm and watching his whole life burn to ashes.

He wonders, sometimes, what it says about him that even now he still has the capacity to be surprised by the cruelty of the universe.

A breeze winds through the narrow cracks of stone, lifting the hair off his forehead. _Trust in the Force_ , whispers his father’s voice.

For a moment, Luke doesn’t move. He allows himself to remember: Han as he first saw him on Tatooine, languid and cocksure, his long legs stretched out and a smoking blaster in his hand; Han’s voice whooping over his headset as he swung out of the darkness of space to the rescue; Han, looking young and stunned with joy, sitting on the edge of Leia’s bed with Ben sleeping in his arms.

He examines the memories like the precious gems they are, then sets them aside, wipes his face on his sleeve, and pushes himself upright.

His self-imposed exile is coming to an end, and there’s work to be done.


End file.
